Chapter 18: Arc 1, Ch.18: Gossip, gossip everywhere

I was completely out of it. Under normal circumstances, my family would have asked, but since I had just gone - no matter how I denied it - to a date, they all kept quiet and left me to my own devices, though they danced around me in case I wanted to talk after all.

As for school, Kaoru and Tarou were very curious. I don’t know how many times they wanted to ask me and were beaten down by Yuji, who had somehow decided to act as my guardian. He probably guessed that my daze had to do with Mizuki.
Why would I think that?

Well, as they are aware, Mizuki has been spending a lot of time with an unknown person and I have stopped gossiping about him. Yuji also knows that we are acquainted and that I’m most likely gay, so he should have guessed that the mystery person was me. If I was acting weird, then Mizuki was likely to play a part in it.

My friend trying to give me privacy was a nice thing and it made me laugh how my other two friends would run and hide behind me when Mama Yuji came to scold them.

I was chewing on my bento, ears pricked to listen to the fujoshi group next to us. Don’t underestimate their network, they were a great source of information no matter the topic.

“I saw it myself, I swear!” The girl was whispering, her tone urgent. “She was a real beauty!”
“So, what, they were on a date?”
“No! Okay, listen. He was out with his sister I guess, since they looked quite similar. Came out of a store together.”
“Haah? His sister?”
“Sheesh, shut up for a second and let her talk!”

“So they came out together and were about to leave when this beauty called for Taizou! Long legs, blonde hair and brown eyes, she looked like a model!”
...Feels familiar.

“Anyway, Taizou immediately greeted her and they talked about something. That beauty didn’t seem to care about his sister at all, she was all about Taizou!”
...Yeah, probably because she already thinks of him as her brother-in-law.

“They appeared rather close. But don’t you think that’s suspicious? I’ve never seen her around before, but suddenly there is a beauty sticking so closely to Taizou… She even touched his shoulder before she left!”

That topic had all girls gaping, even the ones that were eavesdropping. Even some of the guys.

My group, too. For other reasons. After all, all three of them knew Haru and probably felt that the description was just as familiar as it was to me.

“Is Haru going out with Taizou?”, Tarou whispered in shock. After all, he quite adored my sister, though not to the point of crushing on her. It was an appreciation for her looks.

I shook my head.
“No, although I guess that was probably her”, I explained quietly. I didn’t want to keep too many things from my friends, so I ended up telling them. “She knows him from me. I’ve kinda become friends with him, he’s tutoring me.”

Kaoru sucked in a breath, pointing at me with wide eyes. “You’re the mystery person!”
“...Yes, I’m the mystery person. Actually he just wanted a reason to reject all those other people constantly asking him out.”

Yuji slapped a hand in front of his face. “...That one time when we called and you were super awkward because those two were gossiping about him…”
“He was sitting right in front of me and heard everything, yep. I accidentally had my phone on loudspeaker.”

A very uncomfortable silence descended on my friends as they realized what they had done.

“Sorry”, Tarou muttered. “Did we mess up your friendship?”
“No, I was lucky. He forgave me.”

Collective relieved sigh.

We went back to listening to the people around us and eating.

“So he’s not going out with Prez? Aw man, they would have looked so cute together… All those doujinshis…”
“At least we have those”, one of the girls patted the other and spoke in a coaxing tone. “Maybe he’ll switch after going out with her for a while.”

Their brains fascinated me. How had they decided so suddenly that a girl and guy that just got along were going out?

I chewed on a piece of meat until it lost taste. Would it be a good idea to try and push Mizuki into the direction of going out with me? I somehow felt bad for dragging him into this… Maybe it would be better to stay as friends as I had planned…

On the other hand, I didn’t want to?

Imagine you’re told your crush probably likes you as well, who wouldn’t want to progress things further? I’m not that much of a saint. I knew myself well enough; now that I had gotten this far, I’d try and do exactly what the system said. See if he can’t maybe get used to being a bit too close to me. I could just watch his reactions in the system, anyway.

“Can I ask you guys a question without you mercilessly annoying me for the backstory?”

Yuji nodded but Kaoru and Tarou stopped a second in their eating, their eyes looking into nowhere until they had found their answer.
“Nah.” "Nu-uh. Impossible.” “Yeah, impossible. You gotta spit out everything." “Hm-mh. Tell us.”

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“You guys are shit. Look at Yuji, he’s being all nice and supportive. He’d help me even without asking. Can’t you be that nice?”
“No way.” “Absolutely not.”

At least they were honest. “Sheesh. Forget it, then.”
“You can’t do that to us”, Kaoru chuckled, poking me with his chopsticks while I made annoyed noises.

I jumped back with my chair to avoid him, bumping into one of the girls on accident. She squeaked, glaring at me.

“Hey! Watch out!”

My classmates were all listed as acquaintances in my list. Since my classmates were people I dealt nearly every day with, I had taken my time to look through all of their entries.
The girls didn’t dislike me, it was more of a mutual indifference towards each other.

“Sorry”, I immediately said, moving my chair back forward to give her space. She huffed in annoyance.

To tell the truth, there were many times in my life where I had wished to be someone like the president. He was universally liked at school. More than his talent or his looks, I was jealous of the fact that he always found the right words to say.

My thoughts often got stuck - not just with Mizuki. I had trouble thinking the moment I felt that I had to choose my words carefully.

To give an example: I had no problems telling people when I liked or disliked food. I even got quite detailed, saying when I thought too much salt was used, or the meat was burnt or things like that.

Then there was the day when Haru made chocolate for valentines, wanting to give it to her crush and asking me what I thought of it. I began to worry that my opinion might not be the same as her crush’s, lowering the quality if she adjusted it to my taste, and freaked out.

I refused to try even the slightest bit of it.

Basically, I get easily worried about my words having a bad influence in any way or hurting someone or making them misunderstand. Whenever I got to that point, my thoughts would turn around and around what I should say and I’d often end up saying nothing at all.

...Now that I think about it, that’s exactly what the system is helping me with? Huh.

I pulled a face and sat down quietly, glaring at Kaoru who gave me an apologetic glance.
”My fault”, he mouthed to me.

We moved the table a bit so that it was closer to the window, creating a larger gap to the girls’ table.

“Hmm, how late is it?”, Tarou changed the topic quite obviously. We all glanced at the clock. There was more than enough time left of our break.

“Wanna play a game then?”, he suggested, pulling out his phone. We all had the same app; a pokemon-like game where you gathered monsters, trained them and competed. It was fun enough for wasting some time.

“Sure.” We all agreed.

I unlocked my phone, making a surprised ‘Oh’ when I spotted a message blinking on the top of my screen. Mizuki’s name was written to the side.

Curious at my reaction, my friends all leaned over my phone, revealing surprised faces when they read the name as well. Tarou and Kaoru opened their mouths before hurriedly holding them shut.

Thank you very much for not screaming through the room that I’m on first-name basis with him! Geez!

I glanced around to make sure no one behind me could read the message, then opened it.

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